Your Questions For The CEOs Of Match And Meetic

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Your Questions For The CEOs Of Match And Meetic

OPW -- Feb 20 -- I've requested CEO interviews with Meetic's Marc Simoncini and the new Match CEO, Greg Blatt. What questions would you most like to be put to the CEOs of Meetic and Match? - Mark Brooks

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Feb 20, 2009 | Permalink

Comments

What does Marc Simoncini think about Downtoearth and the strategy of Match to go back "from fee to free" ?

Will Match disappear from Microsoft website and be replaced by Meetic in the next 24 months ?

How many % of people are member of Match and Meetic ?

Posted by: Fred | Feb 20, 2009 at 04:13 PM

and what about Netclub ?

Posted by: Fred | Feb 20, 2009 at 04:14 PM

Does Meetic have any plan about Turkey with 25 million internet population?

Posted by: Ersan | Feb 21, 2009 at 12:21 PM

Plans about:
* Future Legislation ?
* Background Checks & Identity Verification ?
* Quality Norms like ISO 9001:2000 ? (Example Shaadi, I think no other site has the ISO 9001:2000 certification, not even any Off Line Chains)
* If they are going to give more attention to the "unexploited" South American market ?
(Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, etc. could be a market over USD100 million)
Match, Meetic / ParPerfeito proposals are not leaders there, their revenue are only coins. Local free online dating sites are the leaders.

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for Match

Former CEOs were Tim Sullivan & Jim Safka, they lasted less than 3 years each one.
Outgoing CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony lasted less than 2 years and he had flown in automatic pilot during his tenure.
Q1 2007 1,338,900 Paid Subscribers
Q4 2008 1,347,300 Paid Subscribers
Suppose now a 22% increase in Paid Subscribers to 1,643,706 thanks to recession boost.

IAC (NASDAQ-NMS:IACI) rarely pays dividends to its patients shareholders and shares had been falling down since years. This new CEO, has big challenges, he should prove he is not only a cannon shooting flowers and draining a huge salary.

Plans about DowntoEarth? DowntoEarth was invented to leverage Match, but if a lot of users perceive DowntoEarth as good as Match, perhaps tired members of Match could migrate to DowntoEarth and revenue suddenly fall down.

Innovations for 2009 ? I remember last October 6, 2008; Ms. Mandy Ginsberg had said to Mr. David Evans: "We're going to see more innovation from Match in 2009 than we've seen in the past few years." and She was right, they fired Enraght-Moony and lost the battle and the war in Europe.

I think Match and Chemistry had reached its operating ceiling! No matter what bells, whistles, horns, drums or other pyrotechnic devices they try, they are not going to reach and sustain more than 2,000,000 paying subscribers.

How he plans to cross and sustain more than 2,000,000 paying subscribers ? Conversion and retention techniques and more bells & whistles will not be enough. Perhaps he could consider to launch a new compatibility matching site better than Chemistry (a new high end matchmaking).

Not sure of this, but is Mr. Blatt single and a fond user of Match?

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for Meetic
Meetic is a public company. Its shares has been oscillating since IPO and falling down since Oct2007. How Mr. Simoncini can explain that?

Performance of Meetic Affinity?

Ulteem rebranded as Meetic Affinity never performed as expected.
Please see previous interview http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/10/meetic_founder_.html
"Brooks: What is your goal for the next 12 months?
Simoncini: The strategy is to become number one in Europe with Ulteem and to launch successfully our new Meetic product (V3) all over Europe.
October 09, 2006"

If the adquired Match's Europe operations include Chemistry rebranded algorithm or not ?

Outside USA&Canada: the "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded, because Chemistry was merged with Match.
Portugal: "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded as Cupido Diario
Spain: "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded as Afinesati
Italy: "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded as Com-Bacio
United Kingdom: "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded as Match.com Personality Test
Norway, Finland, Denmark: "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded as MatchMe
Netherlands, Belgium: "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded as Chemie
France: "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded as Alchimie
Austria, Germany: "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded as Amor
Ireland: "Daily5" is Chemistry rebranded as Daily5

How a prospective client could differentiate Meetic Affinity from Parship or Be2 or eHarmonyUK proposals ?

Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]

Posted by: Fernando Ardenghi | Feb 21, 2009 at 06:44 PM

It would be good to know what they are planning in the UK. Both Match and Dating Direct (Meetic) appear to be launching new sites to create 'portfolios' better suited to the changing market, i.e. Affinity for more serious daters, DownToEarth for free daters etc.

Given this - what is the plan with the two leading brands? It seems to me most likely that they will try to take cost out at the back end (esp ad spend) and possible exploit potential cross-sell at the front
end.

A more daring option would be to merge the sites and try to dominate the online dating space in the UK, by becoming THE must use site for anyone looking for mass market dating where scale is so important.

What the strategy would be is very interesting....

Posted by: Chris Martin | Feb 23, 2009 at 06:56 AM